The definitive publication for all technical aspects of Java SE
7 can be viewed online in PDF and HTML formats, continuing the
tradition of publishing a Java bible of sorts. Alex Buckley, spec
lead of the Java language and VM at Oracle, informed
us that officially, the specifications have been available in
PDF form since July 2011, in Annex 3 of the Final
Release of JSR 336 (Java SE 7), but were revised slightly
for the version we have today.

Confusion may arise of the naming of this documentation – JLS 7
and JVM7, breaking away from the slightly perplexing old numbering
format to a more simplified approach of just naming it after the
version. So the next specifications will be JLS 8 and JVM 8.

This version contains the prefaces from past versions of the
syntax and semantics guide. From the original version created
by James Gosling, Bill Joy and Guy Steele 15 years ago, there’s
this introduction

In their book The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and
Dennis Ritchie said that they felt that the C language “wears well
as one’s experience with it grows.” If you like C, we think you
will like the Java programming language. We hope that it, too,
wears well for you

A decade and a half on, Alex Buckley denotes several of the
innovations added to Java SE 7 within his preface, including the
following:

try-with-resources

Improved literals

Multi-catch

Simplified method calls

Diamond operators

Strings in switch

Improvements for dynamically typed JVM
languages

His addendum is suitably poignant too.

Long may the Java programming language to be a reliable
partner and trusted friend for millions of developers.

We can expect printed versions some time in 2012. For now,
Buckley encourages us to report any errors to him directly, as
per the JCP pages for JSR
901 and JSR 924. All
proposals for new features should be made through
the JDK
Enhancement Proposal Process.